As Particle Dev keeps growing we want to keep it modular and more accessible to new contributors. To achieve this we’re making some changes to how where its code lives and how those moving parts work together. Before I begin here’s some glossary to make stuff clearer:
Atom - hackable text editor allowing you to install 3rd party packages
Particle Dev package - main package for Atom providing base features for developing with Particle devices
Particle Dev feature packages - separate, additional Atom packages providing additional features like calling functions or checking variables
Particle Dev App - standalone, custom build Atom version which bundles all Particle Dev packages
There are two ways to use Particle Dev tools:
Install Atom and install all Particle Dev packages from it
or
Download whole Particle Dev App (what probably most of you did)
What’s changing
Repositories
In the beginning all Particle Dev tools sources including the app were in a single repository. This is going to change starting with moving Particle Dev App sources to spark/particle-dev-app. Next many features which are now part of main Particle Dev package will be turned into Particle Dev feature packages. You’re more than welcome to check them out and contribute! You can find them by searching our GitHub account.
Versioning / releasing
Currently Particle Dev App and Particle Dev package versions are equal. Whenever package is updated, new version of app has to be released. This relationship will be broken into:
Particle Dev package version will continue but will be released more often, delivering bug fixes and features faster
Particle Dev App version will reflect current version of Atom used to build it and will be released independently from Particle Dev package
We hope this way we’ll be able to accommodate community requests faster, be more transparent about it and welcome new contributors to a more accessible codebase.
I was wondering why my Particle Dev App wasn’t working properly. I just updated Atom and thought my Particle Dev needed update from the 0.25 but i got this error. So my question is, should i just download the Particle Dev package in Atom? or is it still safe to just use Particle Dev?
Which ones did you download? Im deleting the Particle Dev app now and will just get the Atom packages. I see about 5 or 6 to download. Also I’m assuming to download spark-dev but do i download all the others as well? Thanks in advance.
@freddyroosevelt Oh and another cool thing about Atom is that you can install a browser pkg (e.g. browser-plus), so you can open the https://docs.particle.io inside Atom. This makes it easier to look at the docs while you’re coding your firmware…
Thanks, have it now. and also: you know how in Particle Dev we had the panel on the left to flash/save/compile our photon ? how do i get that panel or how is it used in Atom? Thanks.
In Atom i discovered another .pkg called “terminal-plus”. This allows you to have a terminal window inside Atom (works on the Mac, not too sure about Windows). Very handy for accessing CLI on the fly, while again working on your code inside Atom.
Also did Particle every work out the serialPort for Node 4.0v??? The cli not working and i don’t want to downgrade back to Node 0.12.7 to use particle commands in cli. When i run particle-cli commands i still get errors.
It’s being worked on, but will take some time (I think). 4.0.0 introduced some breaking changes when it merged back with io.js
Any particular reason why you’d rather use the 4.x version rather than the working 0.12.7 other than “I want to use the latest version!”?
Im working on a project with ES6 feats and wanted to add my photon project I’m working on with it. Now that i can use node with ES6, i just wanted to integrate my photon project with it.
For anyone else interested in how to use the Atom text editor for Particle Development i wrote a quick tutorial for it in the tutorial section… Check it out !!!
